In a short time she became
composed, and was able to talk collectedly and rationally.
This, indeed, was the severest trial that Lamh Laudher had yet
sustained. With all the force of an affection as strong and tender as
it was enduring and disinterested, she urged him to relinquish his
determination to meet the Dead Boxer on the following day. John soothed
her, chid her, and even bantered her, as a cowardly girl, unworthy of
being the sister of Meehaul Neil, but to her, as well as to all others
who had attempted to change his purpose, he was immovable. No; the
sense of his disgrace had sunk too deep into his heart, and the random
allusions just made by Ellen herself to the Dead Boxer's villainy, but
the more inflamed his resentment against him.
On finding his resolution irrevocable, she communicated to him in a
whisper the message which the stranger had sent him. Lamh Laudher,
after having heard it, raised his arm rapidly, and his eye gleamed with
something like the exultation of a man who has discovered a secret that
he had been intensely anxious to learn. Ellen could now delay no longer,
and their separation resembled that of persons who never expected to
meet again. If Lamh Laudher could at this moment have affected even a
show of cheerfulness, in spite of Ellen's depression it would have given
her great relief. Still, on her part, their parting was a scene of
agony and distress which no description could reach, and on his, it
was sorrowful and tender; for neither felt certain that they would ever
behold each other in life again.
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